Spirit of God, or of Antichrist? | 1 John 4:1-2

Lord's Day: June 22, 2025 Preacher: Carlos Montijo Series: First John Topic: Discernment Scripture: 1 John 4:1–3; Acts 20:30; Hebrews 4:9–13; 5:9–14; John 7:24; 2 Peter 1:3–4; 1 John 2:18–25; Matthew 7:13–14

1Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.... 1 John 4:1–2

• Discernment in a sense illustrates law and gospel: It is both a command (law), a daily necessity and duty that we all must practice constantly, as well as a good, gracious gift from God (gospel)

I. Discernment is definitional to the Christian—to be a Christian is to discern

• Discernment is the mirror that allows us to see who we really are

II. How then do we grow in our discernment? In our ability to test every spirit?

• Discernment and sound judgment are closely related in Scripture, go hand in hand, frequently overlap
• You cannot judge righteously unless you first discern properly
• Grasping God’s Word, understanding it, requires discernment

III. Beware—A lack of active, consistent, constant, daily discernment points to and leads to a lack of understanding

• It leads to forgetting things that we previously learned, even to a lack of desire to understand, “dullness of hearing” (Heb 5:11)
• Discernment is cumulative

IV. One of the main reasons we must have our “powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” is because the devil and his antichrist spirit are master counterfeiters‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

• One of the necessary qualities of biblical discernment—in addition to knowledge of Scripture and of sound doctrine—is logic

V. There are many, many erroneous ways of relating to God, many false claims to the true God

• Matthew 7:13–14

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  El Paso, Texas 79903

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Scripture quotations taken from the (LSB®) Legacy Standard Bible®, Copyright © 2021 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Managed in partnership with Three Sixteen Publishing Inc. LSBible.org and 316publishing.com